Winn v. Cook
| Decision Date | 23 December 2019 |
| Docket Number | No. 19-5013,19-5013 |
| Parties | Douglas Ray WINN, Petitioner - Appellant, v. Max COOK, Creek County District Attorney, Respondent - Appellee, and Douglas W. Golden, Creek County District Judge, Respondent. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Tenth Circuit |
Submitted on the briefs:*
Robert D. Gifford, II, Gifford Law, P.L.L.C., Oklahoma City, Oklahoma for Petitioner-Appellant.
Before HARTZ, PHILLIPS, and EID, Circuit Judges.
Applicant Douglas Ray Winn seeks a certificate of appealability (COA) to appeal the denial by the United States District Court for the Northern District of Oklahoma of his application for relief under 28 U.S.C. § 2241. See 28 U.S.C. § 2253(c)(1)(A) (); Montez v. McKinna , 208 F.3d 862, 866–69 (10th Cir. 2000). Applicant signed a waiver of his right to a jury trial during his state criminal proceeding. But he then claimed the waiver was invalid, and he filed his § 2241 application asking the district court to order the state court to conduct a jury trial. Concluding that the waiver was valid, the district court denied relief. We deny a COA and dismiss the appeal. We rely, however, on the ground that Younger v. Harris , 401 U.S. 37, 91 S.Ct. 746, 27 L.Ed.2d 669 (1971), precludes federal-court intervention.
Applicant was charged in Oklahoma state court with domestic abuse (assault and battery) and related offenses. At a pretrial hearing he signed a waiver of his right to a jury trial so that he could qualify for a state mental-health court program. Because he did not complete the program, his case was put back on the trial docket. He then filed a motion in the state trial court for reinstatement of a jury trial, stating his waiver was not knowing, willing, or voluntary. There was no transcript of the pretrial hearing, so the court held an evidentiary hearing. Applicant testified that he had believed he was signing paperwork to enter the mental-health program, rather than signing a waiver, because he did not read the paperwork. He further claimed he did not recall either his attorney or the judge advising him about the waiver. Applicant's then-attorney testified that although he could not remember specifically discussing the waiver with Applicant, his standard practice is to advise defendants of the rights they are waiving and the permanence of such a waiver. The court determined that the waiver was knowing and voluntary and denied Applicant's motion.
Applicant filed a petition for emergency relief with the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals (OCCA) seeking either a writ of prohibition or writ of mandamus. But the OCCA ruled that Applicant could not establish that the lower court's denial of his jury-trial motion was "unauthorized by law," as required for a writ of prohibition, nor could he show that he had a "clear legal right to the relief sought," as required for a writ of mandamus. Aplt. App. at 139–41 .
Applicant then sought federal-court relief under § 2241, requesting an order requiring the state court to provide him a jury trial. The State responded that Applicant had validly waived his right to a jury trial, and the district court agreed. The court also held (1) that Applicant had exhausted his available state remedies by raising his invalid-waiver claim in the state trial court and then seeking emergency relief from the OCCA on the same ground, and (2) that it was not required to abstain from exercising jurisdiction under Younger . Because we hold that the district court should have abstained, we need not address any other issues.
Applicant is not entitled to a COA if no reasonable jurist would find it debatable that his application (1) fails to state a valid constitutional claim or (2) is procedurally barred. See Slack v. McDaniel , 529 U.S. 473, 484, 120 S.Ct. 1595, 146 L.Ed.2d 542 (2000). He fails on the procedural prong, because the district court was required to abstain under Younger . We review de novo the district court's ruling regarding abstention. See Walck v. Edmondson , 472 F.3d 1227, 1232 (10th Cir. 2007).
Under the Younger abstention doctrine, federal courts are to abstain from exercising jurisdiction to interfere with state proceedings when the following three requirements are met:
(1) there is an ongoing state criminal, civil, or administrative proceeding, (2) the state court provides an adequate forum to hear the claims raised in the federal complaint, and (3) the state proceedings involve important state interests, matters which traditionally look to state law for their resolution or implicate separately articulated state policies.
Chapman v. Oklahoma , 472 F.3d 747, 749 (10th Cir. 2006). All three requirements are satisfied here. First, the parties do not dispute that there is an ongoing state criminal proceeding.
With regard to the second factor, "unless state law clearly bars the interposition of the federal statutory and constitutional claims," a plaintiff typically has "an adequate opportunity to raise federal claims in state court." Crown Point I, LLC v. Intermountain Rural Elec. Ass'n , 319 F.3d 1211, 1215 (10th Cir. 2003) (brackets and internal quotation marks omitted). Applicant offers no reason to think that Oklahoma state courts would not provide an adequate forum to review his claim, nor can we discern one. Indeed, the state trial court conducted an evidentiary hearing on the claim. Younger requires only the availability of an adequate state-court forum, not a favorable result in the state forum. See Moore v. Sims , 442 U.S. 415, 430, 99 S.Ct. 2371, 60 L.Ed.2d 994 (1979) (). To be sure, proceedings for emergency review by the OCCA provide only a limited opportunity for relief, but an adverse decision does not preclude later plenary review on direct appeal. See Kimmel v. Wallace , 370 P.2d 844, 846 (Okla. Crim. App. 1962) (). And the fact that state-writ relief may be limited does not change the Younger analysis. See Davis v. Lansing , 851 F.2d 72, 73, 76 (2d Cir. 1988) (); see also Sweeney v. Bartow , 612 F.3d 571, 573 (7th Cir. 2010) ().
Finally, the third Younger requirement is met. For the purposes of Younger , state criminal proceedings are viewed as "a traditional area of state concern." Seneca-Cayuga Tribe of Okla. v. Oklahoma ex rel. Thompson , 874 F.2d 709, 713 (10th Cir. 1989) ; see Doran v. Salem Inn, Inc. , 422 U.S. 922, 931, 95 S.Ct. 2561, 45 L.Ed.2d 648 (1975) (); Fisher v. Whetsel , 142 F. App'x 337, 339 (10th Cir. 2005) ().
When Younger 's three requirements are met, abstention is mandatory unless one of three exceptions applies: the prosecution was "(1) commenced in bad faith or to harass, (2) based on a flagrantly and patently unconstitutional statute, or (3) related to any other such extraordinary circumstance creating a threat of ‘irreparable injury’ both great and immediate." Phelps v. Hamilton , 59 F.3d 1058, 1063–64 (10th Cir. 1995). Because (1) neither Applicant nor the federal district court has suggested that there was bad faith or harassment in state court and (2) there has been no challenge to the constitutionality of any statute, we consider only whether the alleged violation of Applicant's right to a jury trial constitutes an irreparable injury meriting an exception to Younger .
Younger said that "irreparable injury" significant enough to permit federal court interference must pose a "threat to the plaintiff's federally protected rights ... that cannot be eliminated by his defense against a single criminal prosecution." 401 U.S. at 46, 91 S.Ct. 746. "[T]he cost, anxiety, and inconvenience of having to defend against a single criminal prosecution, could not by themselves be considered ‘irreparable’ in the special legal sense of that term." Id. If there is no injury "other than that incidental to every criminal proceeding brought lawfully and in good faith," id. at 47, 91 S.Ct. 746, there is no irreparable injury. In other words, an error by the state court does not create an irreparable injury simply because the defendant must proceed through the tainted trial before obtaining relief—relief that may well entail a second trial. For example, in Samuels v. Mackell , 401 U.S. 66, 91 S.Ct. 764, 27 L.Ed.2d 688 (1971), the defendant sought to enjoin his trial for violating an allegedly unconstitutional state anarchy statute. The Court held that having to endure a state criminal trial was not an immediate irreparable injury warranting federal relief. Id. at 67–69, 91 S.Ct. 764 ; see Perez v. Ledesma , 401 U.S. 82, 85, 91 S.Ct. 674, 27 L.Ed.2d 701 (1971) (); see also Allee v. Medrano , 416 U.S. 802, 839, 94 S.Ct. 2191, 40 L.Ed.2d 566...
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